


no paper will conceal it

by alchemystique



Category: The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-11
Updated: 2017-12-11
Packaged: 2019-02-13 14:08:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12985701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alchemystique/pseuds/alchemystique
Summary: She’s never seen him properly. He seems to have a consistent crew of young men who come in and smile charmingly to families for three or four hours a day before another comes in to relieve them, and other than a quick glimpse at his face in shadowed profile under a dark black hood, mostly she’s watched him heft trees across the lot, rearranging in some way which must make sense to him. There was also the one time he’d swaggered by her, coffee in hand as she blinked sleep out of her eyes while she walked toward the bodega he’d just left, but she hadn’t been paying attention until he was already past her and when she’d finally realized, he’d already disappeared back into his trees, like a ghost.





	no paper will conceal it

**Author's Note:**

> if you thought i would fall into the hole of writing holiday fic for kastle, you were right. title comes from sara bareilles song “love is christmas”. 
> 
> slightly au in that frank doesn’t kill people, but almost everything else is the same

It’s a terrible idea to chase this story, she knows it even as she leaves her office and heads towards the previously empty lot five blocks from her apartment, the one that had suddenly sprouted a hundred Christmas trees sometime between the hours of 1 AM and 4 AM the morning after Thanksgiving. 

Karen doesn’t sleep, much.

It’s been a week, and in that time she’s seen a trail of young looking men hustle nervously towards the lot, disappear into the trees for a bit, and then appear later with heavy, dark duffels under their arms, looking shifty as they disappear into the night. She’s also seen the frankly ridiculously suspicious black van that tends to park there sometime between 4 and 6, and only ever leaves after Karen has gone to bed, long after the one sad string of fairy lights has been turned off and families shopping for trees have tucked in for the evening.

And then there’s the guy.

She’s never seen him properly. He seems to have a consistent crew of young men who come in and smile charmingly to families for three or four hours a day before another comes in to relieve them, and other than a quick glimpse at his face in shadowed profile under a dark black hood, mostly she’s watched him heft trees across the lot, rearranging in some way which must make sense to him. There was also the one time he’d swaggered by her, coffee in hand as she blinked sleep out of her eyes while she walked toward the bodega he’d just left, but she hadn’t been paying attention until he was already past her and when she’d finally realized, he’d already disappeared back into his trees, like a ghost. 

Still. He’s there, and there’s something going on, and Karen is determined to figure out what it is. The lot has been empty for years, never been used by anyone but a few addicts too strung out to realize it was visible from every direction. A year ago she’d tried to talk to someone about putting a park in there, or maybe start a garden, but she’d been shot down before she’d even made it through her speech, and she hadn’t tried again.

And now, after all this time, suddenly there’s Balsams and Firs and Blue Spruces and more than likely a crime ring, too. 

She’d told Ellison she was taking a long lunch to get a tree for her apartment, and the asshole had blinked at her, narrowed his eyes, and then sighed and shrugged. Like he believed her. Like it was _believable_ that Karen Page, who practically lived at the paper and who only spared time for drinks with her friends once every few months and who hadn’t spoken to her parents in half a year was suddenly feeling the Christmas spirit.

What she hadn’t told Ellison was “I think a dude with a creepy van is hustling drugs out of the Christmas tree lot by my apartment” because even to Karen that sounded like a crazy reach.

She stops for coffee at the bodega on the corner just to give herself something to do with her hands, and watches the lot while she rips open packets of sugar. 

It’s strange, the way she’s able to watch the swath of humanity pass her by without ever feeling...close to it. She’s been called a bleeding heart more times in her life than she can count, but it’s not that. She’s... perceptive. She sees things. She sees the family rounding the corner, two kids playfully shoving at each other while their parents watch in stony silence, standing just far enough apart that Karen is almost certain dad has been sleeping on the couch for a while. She sees the happy couple wandering by, laughing, hands clasped, and knows that the woman is far more in love than the man. She sees a man in a business suit walk past the homeless guy on the corner, his eyes on his phone and a grimace on his face. 

She sees a kid get off his bike and round the fence into the lot, disappearing between the trees, and slides in after him, waiting, wondering if it was really going to be this easy.

She wanders, for a bit, glancing through branches in hopes of catching sight of her would be drug lord or one of his minions, but no such luck. If it were easy, there would be far more people gunning for her job.

The crime beat at the Bulletin isn’t so much sought after as it is a place to stick all the idiots who can’t keep their nose out of anything. Karen, for all that she loves this job, hadn’t actually gone looking for it. She’d stumbled upon it, like most of the idiots who’d come before her, and she lived it and she breathed it but it wasn’t... healthy. She’d chase a lead on two hours of sleep and a vat of caffeine, if she had to, and she’d met more than one source late at night: in empty warehouses, in derelict buildings, in dark parking garages, once on a build site, two floors up and a steel beam between her and a twenty foot drop. And she’d done it all in heels. 

Foggy is constantly terrified for her life, but then, so is Karen, and it hasn’t stopped her yet, so she doesn’t expect to be making any concessions for the one friend she still trusts in this city any time soon.

There’s a sort of calm that comes over her, wandering through the trees, her eyes carefully cataloging every face she sees, but it’s not the magic of the season. This is a different sort of peace - the kind that washes over her when she makes a connection no one has made before, when she sends off a final draft to copy, when her byline sends the feds to a piece of shit they hadn’t bothered to check on before. There’s comfort in knowing that her words mean something, in knowing that she can make things happen in a world that mostly just tries to ignore the bad shit that goes on around them every day.

As she’s nearing the back of the lot, she catches the break she’s been looking for. Just beyond the last row of trees, behind the fence they’re leaned against, she hears a door slide open, and a gruff voice mutter something she can’t quite catch. 

Karen shuffles closer, to the edge of the lot, ignoring the needles digging into her jacket sleeve, straining to hear what’s being said.

“...better hear you made it to Curt’s tonight, James. I’m not fucking around here, giving handouts.”  


“Dude, I got it. Lay off the drill sergeant crap, Castle.”  


Karen waits with bated breath. That’s two names, and if she can just lay low long enough to get a plate number off the van...

“You’re gettin a second chance kid. Don’t screw it up.”  


“Jesus Christ, man, I said I got it.”  


There’s a shuffle, and a small puff of breath, like it’s been knocked out of someone. The first voice, Castle, says something too low for her to hear, but if she had to make a guess, she’s betting a threat is involved. Another shuffle of clothing, the sound of boots on concrete, and then Castle speaks again, loud and clear and barely a yard from where she stands. 

“Get out of here before you really piss me off.”  


The kid books it, and through the branches she can see the duffel tucked under his arm, but the gate behind her is creaking open and Karen busies herself with looking like a normal, perusing customer. 

“Don’t strike me as the Douglas Fir type, ma’am.” Karen swivels in place, nearly sending her coffee flying as her hand drops towards her bag. Castle takes a step back, hands raised. “Didn’t mean to scare you,” he says, but there’s a tic in his jaw like he’s thinking about smiling, and Karen takes her first good look at him. 

The twelve-times-broken nose she’d caught in profile is more striking up close, an interesting quirk to what might otherwise be a fairly unremarkable face. He’s holding her gaze, big brown eyes blown wide as he slowly lowers his hands back to his sides. He’s got a vaguely military haircut - buzzed sides and an inch or so of growth on the top of his head, and a wide, full mouth that is still threatening to break into a smile. 

He doesn’t look like he smiles much, in general, but there’s amusement in his gaze as he takes her in, eyes tracking the fall of her hair over one shoulder and the way her hand is dipped into her pocketbook. He quirks a brow at that. 

“You gonna shoot me?”  


Karen blinks. “What?”

Castle blinks back, running his tongue over his teeth as he eyes the hand in her bag very deliberately. “Christ, lady, please tell me you have a permit for that.”

“Why would I need a permit for a handbag?”  


He sighs, blows a deep breath out through his nose, and rolls his eyes at her, turning his head away with a shake. “Right. Nothing to see here, folks,” he says with an ironic lilt, gesturing around like they aren’t the only two people in the back half of the lot. “You here for a tree or what?”

The amusement is gone from his voice, and Karen narrows her eyes at him, tucks her tongue into her cheek as he purses his lips right back at her. “I can see why you don’t sell the trees yourself.”

“You make it a habit to stake out a place before you buy something?”   


Karen pulls in a deep breath, tries not to look caught out, but he’s eyeing her more closely, now, something like recognition registering as he stares at her. He takes a step closer, shooting a daring look at the hand still tucked in her bag. 

In a situation like this, most people would bolt in the opposite direction and never return. In the back of her mind, Foggy’s voice is screaming at her to do just that. Karen ignores it and rolls her shoulders back, staying even with his height as he gets closer. 

“Page, right? You’re the Bulletin’s golden girl.”   


There’s derision in his voice when he says it, his voice rumbling over _golden_ like a swear word, and Karen goes on the defensive. 

“What’s that supposed to mean?”  


“Whatever you want it to mean.”  


“Whatever I want it to - you know, you have a lot of nerve, for a guy who recruits kids to sell for him out of the back of a sketchy van and sells _Christmas trees_ as a cover.”  


Castle blinks again, and Karen takes a moment to reassess. This is hardly the first time she’s accused someone of something before she has all the evidence she needs. Some of them have even been bigger and scarier than this guy, but there’s something about the way he shifts from foot to foot, something about the way his eyes drag deep into her skin and dig at her spine, something about the way he’d known about the gun in her bag the moment she’d turned towards him that makes her think that maybe this is one of her more stupid decisions. 

The deep chuckle that rumbles from his chest is both unexpected and... comforting. Despite every instinct she has, despite having spent the last week suspecting this man of running drugs out of the back of his sketchy van, Karen feels her guard drop. “You’re fucking crazy, ma’am,” is what he says when he’s done shaking his head and running a hand through his hair. “Jesus, you came out here trying to catch a lead on me, didn’t you? You do that a lot? Chase after a story, no backup, not having a damn clue how dangerous someone could be?” Another quick glance at her, and he snorts. “Yeah you do.”

Again, another sad fact of her life is that this is a conversation she’s had in various forms before, but this one is different, somehow. There’s not a hint of threat in his voice, just a vague disbelief, and maybe a hint of regard.

“I work with vets,” he admits, softly, like it’s a secret. “Boys come back without a clue what the hell they’re gonna do now. Lot of ‘em end up barely scraping by, or living on the streets. I uh... buddy of mine runs a couple groups, rents out rooms sometimes.” He ducks his head, bashful now, and runs his hand through his hair again, a nervous tic that five minutes ago she would have assumed was due to him testing out his supply. “I do laundry, when I can. Put together food, and shit. Give ‘em work, try to get them back in the world.”  


Karen pulls at her lips with her teeth, raises the hand from her pocketbook to presses it over her lips, and nods her head even as a disbelieving laugh bubbles over. “And that kid, earlier? You were...?”

“Some of ‘em need a little tough love. I assume that’s what you mean. ‘Cause you were listening to us, right?”  


Karen tilts her head, suddenly, achingly curious about this man for an entirely new reason. “Yeah. Yeah, I was listening.”

He chuckles, his head shaking back and forth, mutters something under his breath that sounds a whole lot like ‘unbelievable’ and Karen tracks the way his cheeks lift, the way he shifts, again, like maybe he’s thinking of just turning around and walking away. When he lifts his head again to meet her gaze, the smile is still there, and it’s reaching his eyes, too. 

“Can I buy you a drink?”  


Karen stills where she stands, watching his head tilt, something shy and somber behind the smile he wears, something charming about the way he looks at her from beneath his brows. “I just falsely accused you of drug running, and you want to buy me a drink?”

“You got a few screws loose, sure, but you’ve got balls of steel, ma’am.”  


Karen is fairly certain she’s never been called ma’am by anyone in her entire life, and she’s never particularly cared for the address, but something about the way his voice rolls over it, gravel and soot rumbling from him - something about it sets her at ease. “It’s the middle of the day.”  


“Is that a no?”  


“No.”  


He chucks his chin up, tilts his head again. “Okay.”

Karen holds his gaze, gives him a crisp nod. “Okay.”

\------

“You’re good at this. I can see why the Bulletin keeps you around.” He’s pointing at her with a fry dipped in ketchup, his beer tipped towards his lips with his free hand, and Karen brushes back the curtain of hair that keeps falling into her eyes. 

“What do you mean?”  


“Page, we’ve been here an hour and I think you know more about me than my old lady ever did. Hell, if we’d had you in intelligence, interrogation might have fucking worked.”

Karen ducks back beneath the curtain of hair and checks the time on her phone. She’s got a missed phone call from Ellison, and a text that is just two question marks - she shoots back a quick ‘ _Following a lead’_ and doesn’t even feel that bad about the lie. It could be a piece, if she wanted it to be - a profile on a war veteran, a think piece on the lives soldiers lead once they return, it could be any number of things, if she wanted it to be.

She doesn’t want it to be.  

Frank Castle, former marine, honorably discharged after a bullet tore through his skull. Friendly fire, he’d said, though the tone of his voice said there was more to that story. His wife had died of cancer a year after he got home, and Frank had gone off the deep end, just a bit, drinking heavily, starting bar fights (”Isn’t that a felony?” “Sure is,” he’d responded on a self deprecating grin.), generally kicking up a fuss, and he’d lost custody of two kids, a boy and a girl who lived upstate with their grandparents and saw him on weekends and every other holiday. 

He’d started going to his friend Curtis’ group meetings after his court appointed therapist told him if he couldn’t get his shit together he’d never see them again.

“I have a trustworthy face.”  


He snorts, his nose wrinkling as he takes a sip of his beer, and Karen bites her lip to keep from smiling too hard. 

Outside, the sun is already low in the sky, and the buildings cast the streets in deep shadow. In an hour or so, lights across the city will twinkle to life, bathing the streets in that warm glow that only happens around the holidays. Once upon a time, Karen had loved Christmas - the lights, the families, the overwhelming sense of community they’d had in their tiny little town in Vermont. 

“You uh... you doin’ okay there?”  


Darting her glance back towards him with a start, Karen starts to nod, and pauses, looking at him in the dull light of the bar. She bites her lip and shakes her head, just once, picking at the label on her bottle. “My brother ran his car off the road two days before Christmas, a few years ago. I uh... it’s hard to get into the spirit anymore, you know? I used to love it. Decorating the tree, driving around the neighborhood to see the lights, going to church on Christmas Eve. I’d wake up early every Christmas morning, even when I got older, and I’d make hot chocolate and sit on the couch with my mug, waiting for everyone else to wake up, just watching the tree.” Blinking through watery eyes, she shoots him a quick smile. "I was a Blue Spruce girl.”

“Maria always took the kids up to cut their own tree. Every time I was home for Christmas, I’d beg her to just get a damn plastic tree. Damn things always got sap and needles everywhere - huge fire hazard too, and I know Frankie and Lisa never watered ‘em. Said she liked the smell, so one year I bought a fake tree and about twenty of those Christmas tree candles.”

“It’s not the same,” she tells him, almost admonishing, and he laughs. His laugh a short, quick laugh, a little rough around the edges like he’s not used to it, like it has to fight his way up and out of his chest.  


“That’s what she said. Never even took the thing out of the box. We were up there, very next day, sawing down a tree while Lisa threw snowballs at us.”  


“So the trees...”

His head tilts in consideration before he gives her a sharp nod. “They tell me it’s a healthier way to mourn than breaking my knuckles on strangers faces.”

“If I promise to water it, can I get you to tough love one of your guys into lugging a tree five blocks and up three flights of stairs?”  


His stare is a little wistful as he takes her in, but there’s an edge to it, too. Something careful, and considering, and not for the first time since he’d startled her that afternoon Karen wonders what he sees, when he looks at her. Not the broken girl who’d left her family behind because she couldn’t face her loss, not the hardass reporter who always got her story regardless of the cost. A few times she’s held his gaze long enough to feel like he’s staring into her soul.

Karen shrugs around his questioning look. “Maybe I need to learn to mourn a little better, too.”

\------

Frank ends up loading a tree onto the van a week later, grumbling the entire way up the stairs, muttering about sap all the way down the hallway, and Karen can’t help the laugh that tumbles out of her when he insists on getting the thing set up for her once it’s there. She’d gone down to Macy’s, dropped far too much of her paycheck on string lights and baubles, and she unloads them while he grunts and curses in the corner by her window. 

When she invites him to stay for dinner he only hesitates for a few seconds, and then insists on paying the kid who delivers a bag of Thai food twenty minutes later. 

It’s easy, toeing off her shoes and settling on her couch next to him, flipping through channels until one of them makes a noise of approval around the food in their mouths. He drinks her shitty rose out of a mug with a llama on it, and makes sarcastic comments under his breath that sometimes make her wheeze with laughter, and when they’ve demolished the food he helps her string the lights around the tree. 

“Maria’s parent’s have the kids for Christmas this year,” he admits on his third mug of wine, and Karen reaches across the length of the tree to curl her hand in his. He squeezes back, and for a while the string of lights illuminate their faces as they stare at each other. He’s got a scar, just above his ear, one she hadn’t noticed until the lights hit it just right, and without a thought her hand reaches up to trace it, fingers curling up and then around his ear, and his eyes dip low, almost closing, lashes fluttering and casting sharp shadows along his cheeks.   


“You could come here. I usually get shitfaced the moment I get off the phone with my mom and pass out to It’s A Wonderful Life.”  


“Sounds pretty fuckin maudlin,” he tells her, eyes fluttering back open, back she doesn’t move her hand, and he tilts his face into her palm.   


She’s three glasses in herself, and her laughter sounds loud in her apartment, the heady mixture of food and wine and lights and _Frank_ making her feel bubbly and loose and... happy. “Maudlin?”

“I know words.”  


She chuckles, again, and leans across the space between them, ducks her forehead against his own and just breathes for a moment.

“Is that a no?”  


From this position, she can see the tilt of his lip as it turns up. “No.”

Karen blows a breath out through her nose, slides her hand down to curl around his neck, where she can feel his pulse rushing beneath his skin. “Okay.”

“Okay.”   


\------

She pitches Ellison a profile on Curtis Hoyle, two hours after she meets him on Christmas Eve, and over the phone she can _hear_ him raise his eyebrows. “Not your usual thing.”

“I’m branching out, Ellison. Aren’t you always telling me to dig deep?”  


“Draft on my desk by the end of the week, then.”  


“Can’t,” she tells him, while Frank traces a whimsical pattern up her arm and presses his lips into her neck. “I’m busy this week.”  


“What have you done to Karen Page?”  


“It’s a...family thing,” she tells him, and sucks in a deep breath when Frank nips at her collarbone.

“Heading to Vermont for the week?”  


“Nope.”  


“Well this is all very confusing and I’ve had too much scotch to make sense of it, but I’ll figure this out eventually. I’ll see you after New Years.”  


“Merry Christmas, Mitch.” For the first time in years, the words are slightly more than a platitude meant to appease the masses.

“Merry Christmas, Page.”  


Frank drops her phone off the side of the couch the moment she hangs up, and Karen can’t find it in her to mind.


End file.
